Group Test: Sub $300 Monitors

Screen Test

Screen tests are all-encompassing and very important; they show us everything from response time to low-saturated colors. And this is where knowing your personal preferences becomes important since, for example, gamers will need something different from photographers and vice versa.

Every monitor requires a handful of adjustments to display a picture correctly. There are dozens of ways to do this with hardware, software, or even carefully crafted websites. No matter how you do it, it is imperative that you do it as soon as you bring a monitor home. A great first step is navigating to System Preferences > Displays > Color and clicking the Calibrate button to launch your Mac’s built-in calibrator. And you can go much, much deeper with the great resources at www.lagom.nl/lcd-test.

Which brings up a key point. Before you make your selection from the group of monitors in our test, consider these questions, which will help you pick the right display: Are you looking for colors that “pop” or for an accurate color representation? Are you using your monitor for movies or gaming? Are you looking for a primary or secondary monitor? Knowing your answers will help you choose wisely as you read on.

What you read isn't always what you get, so it's important to know which facts really matter.

Right out of the box, the Acer couldn’t distinguish a single shade of the 16 shades in our white-level saturation tests. There’s a delicate balance between displaying one end of the spectrum or the other, but after significantly tweaking the contrast ratio and brightness, the spectrum was still far from perfect on both the Acer and the Dell. For a work monitor, the NEC faired surprisingly well on differentiating deep blacks and low saturation colors, but didn’t look good with dark movies. The Samsung and HP did the best with our black, white, and low-level saturation tests.

If you look at text all day, hardcore tests may not affect your purchase decision. Text is most legible with contrast as high as possible, which would adversely affect photo quality. The NEC has the lowest native resolution at 1680x1080, and the HP is by far the darkest even cranked to 100 percent brightness, but both handle text extremely well. The Dell faired the poorest in differentiating shades of black.

There are problems that even casual computer users will want to be aware of, however. Many monitors are unable to display small steps or dark shades, so to correct that, LED pixels flicker lights on and off at tremendous speeds to display various shades. This is often imperceptible to the eye, but at times you can see a drifting pattern of light onscreen. It’s called temporal dithering, and the Acer had it in several shades of gray. For certain users, especially photographers interested in black-and-white photography, this alone could be a deal-breaker.

The Dell had a still more serious issue: no matter how many adjustments we made, there was always a tint on the screen. The monitor was preloaded with different graphic modes, which you can’t turn off, and they made accurate color representation egregiously off-base.

The Samsung has a tad more screen real estate than the HP and was loads brighter. Movies and gaming looked kickass on both, but a heads-up to serious gamers, who will likely notice ghosting on all monitors operating at a 60Hz refresh rate, as all the monitors in this test do.

Screen Test Ratings:

Samsung PX2370: 4 out of 5NEC EA221WM-BK: 3 out of 5HP ZR22W: 4 out of 5Dell P2311H: 2.5 out of 5Acer S243HL: 3 out of 5

Setting Crooked Stats Straight

Whether you’re a newcomer in the market or a seasoned shopper, one rule remains the same: always be wary of manufacturers’ stats. Here’s what to look for:

Viewing angles are often stated at 170 horizontal/160 vertical, but most screens will be significantly distorted at such extreme angles. The method that manufacturers use to determine the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable angle is…ambiguous at best, so pay little attention to this stat.

Then there’s a statistic called “dynamic contrast ratio,” which makes it possible for manufacturers to claim their monitors have larger-than-life contrast ratios. Our Acer claimed 8,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and only 1,000:1 contrast ratio. Dynamic contrast ratio is a throwaway spec, so pay closer attention to smaller numbers when they’re offered.

Response times only measure the fastest color transitions a monitor offers (often gray-to-gray). Certain transitions are significantly faster than others; those transitions are reported as if they’re typical. They’re not, so be aware of that bluff.

All monitors we reviewed had a refresh rate of 60Hz, meaning even if the manufacturer claims a 2-millisecond response time, the screen wouldn’t refresh for 17 milliseconds. It’s a goofy stat, but because true response times are usually much less impressive than advertised, it’s still possible that certain transitions would be visibly slower than the refresh rate. Yup, it’s a wild west out there in monitor land, but by knowing what you know about these three “stats,” you’ll be able to choose much more wisely.